


flash points, like gunpowder

by betony



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: The City has no shortage of pretty little things ready to turn up prematurely deceased when and where it might cause the most bother. Stadicos, though, is neither pretty nor little nor, most disappointingly of all, dead.What he is is Attolia’s problem.





	flash points, like gunpowder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tequila_Mockingbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tequila_Mockingbird/gifts).



To no one’s surprise the trouble starts with a disappearance. The City has no shortage of pretty little things, after all, ready to turn up prematurely deceased when it might cause the most bother. What makes this one different is that Stadicos is neither pretty nor little nor, most disappointingly of all, dead.

What he is is Attolia’s problem.

Attolia has a standing weekly engagement to be taken out to dinner by the Chief of Police for the Metropolitan Department; but the phone rings high and shrill at seven o’clock sharp, and here Attolia is instead, staring down at the chilly waters of the Seperchia.

“He was last seen here?” Attolia asks. “You’re sure?”

A needless confirmation; Relius is not in the habit of telling her anything he isn’t certain about. He nods regardless.

“I might speak to Nahuseresh,” she offers, and for the fraction of a second, her voice wavers. “He could have the River dredged and the body recovered by sunrise….”

Relius shakes his head. “Stadicos was last seen,” he corrects, “walking eastwards from here.”

“Towards the Fifth?”

“And not alone.” He pauses, clears his throat. “Accompanied, according to our witnesses, by a man who matches the description of the Thief of Eddis.”

Attolia swears, soft and savage.

* * *

She hates visiting the Fifth District. The Second, due south, somehow remains under Sounis’ hamfisted control; First, Third, and Fourth have acknowledged the supremacy of the Metropolitan Department’s rule of law; the Sixth is _hers_.

The Fifth, though, owes its loyalty to Queen Eddis, and that makes it more dangerous than all the rest combined.

Snow tumbles down, and Attolia shivers as she leaves the warmth of the car. She’d left her gloves behind in her rush, which leaves her tucking her hands into her pockets like a fishwife peddling her wares on the docks. Her joints ache, and with sudden anger (at the cold, at her joints, at her own damned self for not having forgotten the whole matter and gone to dinner) she thinks bitterly that she is growing far too old for this sort of thing.

Naturally this is when the Thief appears. He melts from the shadows in all the finery expected of Eddis’ fancy boy, and Attolia only just keeps herself from sneering. He hadn’t put on such airs the last time she’d seen him.

He tips his hat at her with a smile, as though they meet on neutral ground in broad daylight. “You’re some distance from the Sixth,” he muses.

Attolia freezes. Her gaze swings wildly about until it finds Relius, still at the wheel, ready to take her back home the instant she reconsiders.Relius is there. She must control herself.

“I’m here to collect one of my associates,” she says instead, and the Thief bows his head.

“Of course. Which one?”

Her hands, safely hidden away in her pockets, tighten. He is clever to make her doubt her men so, to make her second-guess her security—clever, and cruel.

“The one,” she counters, in no mood for his games tonight, “seen leaving the North Bridge in your company.”

His face twists in exaggerated concentration before he shrugs. “Can’t be. I’ve been dancing attendance on my Queen all night.” And indeed, his face is flushed with exertion, smart black bow tie undone over his crisp white shirt. Attolia looks away.

Two can be cruel as easily as one. “I imagine eventually she’d learn to make…accommodations.” She is not so gauche to gaze pointedly at his right arm, or what is left of it; she does not need to.

The Thief’s face hardens, and Attolia’s courage fails her. She yawns and turns away, towards the security of the open car door when he catches at her sleeve.

It’s his turn to freeze, which is how she knows it must have been unintentional. She dares not move, not so much as an inch, until he says, voice warm at her neck, “But if there is any other way I might be of service, only say the word.”

She yanks her sleeve free; she does not look back. In the morning, she promises herself, she will ring Nahuseresh.

* * *

She doesn’t.

Stadicos turns up at her house the next morning, hale and hearty, all apologies for interrupting her breakfast, but does she not want to look over the new menu he’s planned for Thegmis’s? A list of respectable dinner dishes for the Feds in the front room, and rather less respectable offerings for the back. He hopes they’ll meet with her approval.

”You’ll be there, won’t you?” he bleats. “At the grand opening tonight?”

Attolia frowns at him, not least because her dreams the night before were full of locked basements and foreign prayers, and the Thief’s dark head disappearing into the Seperchia. Her patience is as short-lived as her sleep had been. Stadicos might at least have had the decency to appear before her bruised and battered; the very fact that he isn’t suggests he doesn’t yet know what she does.

She takes another bracing sip of coffee and makes up her mind.

“Better I not be seen anywhere nearby,” she snaps, and before Stadicos can thank her for her time, she has swept to her feet and left him behind.

* * *

The Public Library is one of the few independent institutions left in the City, and, as such, the only meeting-place open to opposing allegiances. The Thief is a patron, Attolia knows, but importantly a near daily visitor. He’s not alone when she runs him to ground. Two other men, one young and fair, the other grizzled and gray, sit with him in an alcove set slightly to the side of the great marble-floored room. They rise at her first footsteps and, after a quick glance at the Thief’s expression, vanish behind the shelves before she can do more than memorize their faces.

Attolia’s hands are in her pockets again, quite intentionally. Impossible to do otherwise in the presence of a thief; the feel of her pocketbook against her left and her pistol against her right are her only remaining defenses. The Thief's coat is discarded untidily on a nearby chair, leaving him in shirtsleeves and a canary-yellow waistcoat that offends the eyes so early in the morning. His trousers are already dusty from his books. She wishes he would speak first, so she needn’t.

Surprisingly he does. He looks up at her, wide-eyed as a child (her stomach turns), and breathes: “You’re here.”

“I didn’t ask you the right question last night,” she says. “I should have said: ‘What do you know about Stadicos?’”

That puts him back on familiar ground. He leans back in his chair and grins up at her: “Stadicos. Lovely chap. Terrible taste in cufflinks.”

She does not take the bait and glance down at the Thief’s sleeves, which she already knows will be adorned with the cufflinks Relius had purchased on her behalf as a holiday remembrance. Instead she only raises an eyebrow.

The Thief sighs and straightens. “Affiliated with the Sixth. Owner of restaurants. Decidedly unresponsive to offers of cooperation with the Fifth.”

 _Until now,_ Attolia thinks. To the Thief, she says: “And?"

The Thief looks even unhappier. Eddis has the singular fortune to control her district without needing to know her associates’ breaking points, and how best to exploit them. It’s made her subordinates every bit as soft. But old habits die hard, and even the Thief’s scruples cannot save him from the consequences of ignorance.

“A brother he buried twelve years back. A mistress who’s already setting her sights higher.” The Thief looks away. “A daughter away at school.”

“Under her own name?”

He looks faintly insulted on Stadicos’ behalf. “A pseudonym.”

Before she can stop herself, Attolia asks, “How old?”

“Ten. Eleven, come summer.”

Attolia rubs her temples. When she looks up again, the Thief is watching her, and that is enough to set her head aching anew. She says, coldly: “He should have known better than to leave loose ends behind.”

The Thief’s mouth opens, but Attolia interrupts.

“Because he wouldn’t, others will. Children aren’t safe in our line of business.” She sets her jaw. “You ought to know that better than anyone.”

He says nothing. She doesn’t know why she thought he might. She nods a farewell and turns on her heel, and is not entirely surprised to hear him following her.

“No gentleman worth the name allows a lady to walk these dangerous streets unprotected.”

Clearly he doesn’t know her as well as he thinks he does. Attolia flattens her lips into a smile.

“I’ve Teleus with me.” Does he still remember the man? He should.

Perhaps not, though, because the Thief grins. “If you did, you wouldn’t feel the need to go armed.” He bounds before her. “Please. Let me.”

If she refuses, he’ll only skulk after her. Attolia sets her shoulders and walks on by way of response.

* * *

 She’s allowed blissful silence until they come up on the border of the Second, and then the Thief nudges her towards a phone booth. The headmistress of the girl--Chloe’s--school picks up on the third ring, and is more than happy to hear from Chloe’s loving aunt.

( _Stadicos_ , Attolia thinks furiously, _you utter fool_.)

Why, she wasn’t even the only relative to confirm Chloe’s well-being. There’d been an uncle--any relation? Ah, no; it must have been on her mother’s side then. Quite a dashing accent he’d had; almost like that what you’d expect Mr. Valentino to boast, was one ever so lucky as to meet him. Certainly they could keep this conversation between them, particularly as there was bad blood between the two sides of the family--and didn’t that explain quite a bit? Chloe’s father had sounded rather rattled when he’d been told of the previous call, but if it was only a question of domestic disharmony….

( _Fool and traitor_.)

Why yes, Chloe was quite well, for now at least. Of course, the Headmistress would be quite happy to call every week with updates and concerns.

Attolia places the receiver back, appalled despite herself. The Thief, slouching about the outside of the booth, asks no questions when she exits. Instead, he falls into step beside her as though it were habit.

“Where to now?” he asks cheerfully, as though she might have lost her mind entirely in the brief seconds since he last saw her and reply _Why, the jeweler’s_ , or worse, _the chapel_. Attolia huffs in response and slips her hands into her pockets again to be sure of their contents, and none too late.

Her pocketbook is undisturbed, and her pistol too, but in her right pocket, through her gloves, she can feel two square objects that ought not to be there.

Attolia stops short, on a street a stone’s throw from Sounis’s district. “Eugenides--”

“Irene,” he replies easily, as though he had any right or reason to. He sees her face then, and grows as sober as she thinks he ever might. “You don’t believe me.”

“I believe,” she says, deliberately misunderstanding him, “that by some miracle, you haven’t lied to me yet this morning. I even believe that you didn’t lie to me last night. But tell me, Thief, who would benefit most from Stadicos allowing Thegmis’s to be lost to the Feds?’

“The Fifth,” he says very carefully, “has no dealings with restaurants. Nor even with rum-running.”

Attolia knows this; the Fifth has far more precious prizes in mind. “Sounis, of course, will swoop down upon what’s left: the premises, the goods, it hardly matters.”

It isn't possible to distract him for long. “Irene,” he says again, lifting his left arm in what is either plea or protest, and this time Attolia really has had enough.

“Good day,” she says firmly, and leaves him behind.

* * *

She convinces herself sometimes that she can’t be blamed for the hours the Thief spent in her basement. He’d been caught going through her most personal documents after all, and when he’d complained that he couldn’t feel his fingers from the cold, who would have believed him? Desperate men lied, after all, and the Thief lied more than most. She had listened at the door for hours that night, and a thousand times over every night since.

What she can, and does, blame herself for is giving him over to the Metropolitan Police Department and the rule of law. At the time it had seemed the closest thing to mercy she could do for him. Instead Nahuseresh had kept him in a county cell for another twenty-four hours before, reluctantly, releasing him into the custody of the medical corps. By then, frostbite had turned to gangrene, and there was nothing to be done. She’d heard, later, that it had been a clean amputation, that if it had progressed an inch further, he might have lost the arm outright. It had been enough, at least, for Eddis to secure his release. By then it didn’t matter.

The earrings were an old gift, left at her bedside months before he’d been found in her study and intended, Attolia supposes, to unsettle her. She’d sent them back weeks before, in what might be called a gesture of good will. She’d honestly believed that would be the last she would see of them.

And yet--she picks one up and twists so that the ruby catches the light--here they were. Here they were.

* * *

When Phresine calls up that there’s a visitor at the door, Attolia half-expects to see the Thief, lost to all reason and come to confront her. The reality is even more foolhardy; Queen Eddis herself, darling of the Fifth, stands at her threshold.

“Come in,” Attolia says, and locks the door behind her. It won’t do to have uncomfortable questions, or unfriendly bullets, aimed either at her or her guest.

Eddis divests herself of her hat and coat without being asked to. So close, she looks even more mannish than usual. Neither she nor Attolia had mother to show them how to properly pin up their hair, but while Attolia had struggled and sworn her way to mastery, Eddis had simply shorn it all off.

“Gen’s off brooding again,” she announces. “I haven’t seen him in _days_.”

Attolia wants to bristle, but elects instead to model remarkable good temper. “What,” she says, “am I to do about it?”

Eddis shrugs. “Nothing. I thought you might want to know.” Before Attolia can reply in the negative, she adds: “You could do worse than to believe him. He has been known to tell the truth occasionally, despite himself.”

So Attolia has been led to believe. But good does it do when she fears the one taken in by the Thief’s ridiculous lies is the Thief himself?

”He is not a child,” Eddis says, pressing her advantage, “no more than you are old instead of lonely and tired.”

Attolia’s lungs burn, but her stiff smile remains. “And at the moment, bored,” she adds. Her guest laughs but recognizes the hint for what it is.

“Regarding the Mede—” Eddis begins in a harsher tone.

“Nicknames,” Attolia says wearily, “are for children’s games. Call them the Metropolitan Department if you must speak of them at all.”

Eddis is not thwarted. “As we hear it,” she says, “you’re quite fond of speaking of them--or to one in particular. It would mean the end of the Sixth, to make alliance with them at last.”

What good is it, hearing what Attolia already knows? “And were that so,” she replies shortly, “I imagine the Fifth would not mourn its passing for long.”

Eddis does not argue, which already raises her several points in Attolia’s estimation. “I only hope,” she says levelly, “that you’re prepared for the consequences.”

* * *

Nahuseresh is good enough to postpone their engagement by a night, and by seven-thirty, Attolia is polished and perfumed, awaiting him with a faint smile.

“As lovely as ever,” he says warmly, and Attolia ducks her head modestly, setting her earrings dancing.

Once in the car, he drives past the first restaurant he habits, and the others too. Attolia keeps her gaze fixed directly ahead. She has neither pistol nor pocketbook tonight, but only her fur wrap: Phresine wouldn’t hear of covering up her lovely dress with a coat.

They come to a stop before Thegmis’s, alit for opening night. Attolia has hardly stepped from the car when the police wagons screech about her. Nahuseresh lacks even the courtesy to seem surprised.

“Forgive me,” he says, leaving her side promptly. “Duty calls.”

They drag Stadicos before her, his expression startled, his face beginning—quite unbecomingly—to sweat. Has he really been trusting enough to believe them when they promised he’d escape a sentence for possessing contraband? A blessing in disguise that he’d been turned: better a traitor in her ranks than an imbecile.

“Do you know this woman?” they ask, and Stadicos bobs his head up and down.

“My p-patron,” he stammers. “Ch-chief investor. With me every st-step of the way.”

“And was she made aware of, ah, what goods you meant to offer?”

“Of course,” Attolia interjects before Stadicos can. “I reviewed the menus myself only this morning.”

Nahuseresh’s eyes narrow as he smiles. “Then I’m sure all this …unpleasantness must only be false report. Shall we?”

Attolia jerks her chin at him and stays where she is until he relents and goes to hold the door open before her. She strides inside before any of the others, and carefully positions herself in the center of the main dining room. Nahuseresh stands between herself and the door, casually catching the handcuffs one of his underlings throws him. In the window, she can catch the flash of newspapermen’s cameras; had he called them, too, to make the Sixth’s defeat complete?

Stadicos must indeed have confessed all: the officers walk directly behind the bar, press the hidden latch, and even keep out of the way of the door thus revealed as it creaks opens—

To find nothing more than empty china cabinets, stacks of additional tables and chairs, and a fine layering of dust above all.

“I see you’ve discovered the spare room,” Attolia muses. “Well done.”

A frantic fifteen minutes more of searching yield nothing more. Out of the corner of her eye, Attolia watches Nahuseresh grow steadily more agitated: how many favors had he called in to achieve this, how many promises had he made? It hardly mattered; once word of this debacle reached his superiors, he would soon find himself demoted, and to none too glorious a post. And with the cameras outside, desperate for their morning lead and uncaring if it made the Chief of Police appear an incompetent, any hope of regaining his past glory would be impossible.

“I don’t suppose,” Attolia murmurs, when at last she tires of studying his misery, “that we’ll have much time for each other in the next few weeks, will we? A relief, I admit; if I may be forthright, you had grown _quite_ tedious.”

He glares at her, red-eyed. Answer enough, Attolia supposes.

“I’ll let myself out,” she promises, and leaves him with her sweetest smile.

* * *

Seven blocks away, she stops and raises her head expectantly, not at all surprised to find herself no longer alone. It might be ‘dancing attendance’ as Eugenides puts it, or bloody-minded prudence, as Attolia imagines, but he has always dogged her footsteps since Nahuseresh’s attentions became more pronounced, since she reached out into the Fifth with an offer of alliance.

Since the night Eugenides had stolen her from her silent house and told her he loved her.

Now he sighs melodramatically and says: “I think, with all the trouble we went to clean out your back room, we ought to have something to show for it. Half the barrels on tap, perhaps.”

“Your lives,” Attolia counter-offers, “after crossing into enemy territory.”

“A kiss from that lovely girl serving bar.”

“Try,” Attolia snaps, “and I’ll cut off your other hand.”

She catches her breath, but Eugenides only laughs. It makes a difference —such a difference—from the time he’d flinched from the very sight of her. Now instead he looks at her earrings, spellbound.

“Do you like them?” he asks, a boy once more, and Attolia closes her eyes.

“It’s not a ‘yes,’” she says when she can speak. “Not yet.”

In another time Eugenides might be swept away by romantic impulse into a marriage whose meaning he didn’t fully comprehend, but they live in modern times now. Eugenides, when he leaves the Fifth behind, won’t do so with half a heart; Attolia, for her part, will believe him and the promises he makes. She can wait until that day. Patience is one talent she possesses.

As though he can divine her thoughts, Eugenides shrugs and reaches for her hand—apparently the prize he claims for his rout of the Mede tonight. He’ll have to do better than that, Attolia thinks, and pulls away.

“I suppose I’ll have to find something to occupy my mind until then,” he says lightly, and Attolia shakes her head.

“Isn’t it work enough, keeping yourself out of the lockup, and the Fifth free?”

His gaze, when she looks over, is fixed on the great bronze doors of City Hall, and takes in everything that surrounds them, the height and width and the breadth of the City.

“I thought,” says Eugenides at last, “to aim a trifle higher.”

Her bare hand closes around his; she squeezes back a silent approval.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title after the following quote from _The King of Attolia_ (HarperCollins, 2009): "The Thieves of Eddis don't have breaking points. We have flash points instead, like gunpowder."  
> Stadicos appears briefly in _The Queen of Attolia_ as one of Attolia's treacherous barons, coaxed by the Mede to betray Thegmis to Sounis. Thank you, Tequila_Mockingbird, for the wonderful prompts and the chance to explore a fandom I love!


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